Private good - Definition and Overview

In economics Private good is an opposite of the public good.

Its main features are:

• excludability (also referred in this context as rivalry) - cannot be consumed by everybody since consumption by one person reduces or excludes consumption by another
• depletability (it is finite)

Private goods are almost exclusively made for profit.

An example of the private good is bread: there is a finite amount of it, and bread eaten by a given person cannot be consumed by another.

One of the most common way of looking at goods in economy, illustrated in the table below, is the classic division based on:

• is there a competition involved in obtaining a given good
• whether it is possible to exclude a person from consumption of a given good

Example Usage of Private